From the Mouths of the Uninitiated

By Joel Anderson

Ninety degrees, humid, bright sun, and a need to cast a fly. Where to go? Water is running too high in the Big Andro to wade for smallmouth. Besides, what you really want to do is cast dries on light bamboo rods for small stream trout. The White Mountains and well shaded mountain streams, ah, that's the ticket. Besides, an hour and a half in the car air conditioning will actually be nice. You pack a frozen water bottle, fruit, a dozen size 12 Letort Hoppers, some 5x tippet, and a few of your favorite small stream bamboo rods, and you're off.

 

Upon arriving streamside, you choose your Paul Young "Midge" clone, a 6'-3", 4 weight, fast action bamboo that should handle this small venue perfectly. You gear up and hike downstream 1 mile, with the gameplan of fishing back to your car. Finally at streamside, you can feel the air conditioning of the mountain water kick in. While you fiddle with your leader, something catches your eye across the stream. A black dog? No, you are looking at a small black bear. He doesn't notice you standing there perfectly still. After a minute or two of sniffing around, he wanders downstream and disappears. Your attention turns back to the task at hand, catching brook trout. That had to be a good omen. As often as you fish remote areas, your encounters with bears are so rare, you vividly recall every one of them.

As you move up through the pocket water, you start to hit stride. Brook trout are everywhere. Your accurate casts and dead drifts are rewarded in almost every likely looking spot. The better pockets hold the 10-12" "keeper-sized" stocked fish; the lesser lies hold the 6-8" natives. "Not bad for mid-August", you think.

Movement again catches your eye, this time from upstream. You see a man and a woman enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon in beach chairs by a stream pool. The woman is fully engrossed in her book, but the man has spotted you and he is watching you intently. In your mind, you try to put this scene together. "He must be a fisherman", you think, "spending 'quality time' with his significant other, content to at least be streamside if not doing what he really wants to be doing, which is exactly what you are doing".

There's still 50 yards of likely holding water between you and the couple, so you continue to work the stream. On point now and ready to supply some entertainment, you and the "Midge" continue to work your magic. One trout after another falls prey to your hopper, many of them 10-12" brook trout, impressive fish for such a small stream. The man never takes his eyes off you, so you play the fish quickly, efficiently, and off the reel, the way it should be, taking the fish out of the water only long enough to subtlety show off their size and flick them off the hook without touching them. You're sure the man must be thoroughly impressed by your finely honed skills. Hell, you're impressing yourself.

Finally, you reach the spot where the couple is camped out for the afternoon. As you walk around the pool, you exchange greetings with the man. The woman never looks up from her book. You mention the black bear you spotted downstream and then the man asks, "Have you caught any good fish, or are they ALL tiny?"

You briefly ponder your answer, and for a moment you consider responding as John Gierach did to a similar question in "Sex, Death and Fly Fishing" and call the man an ass&*%#. But you think better of it; no sense in ruining such a perfect afternoon astream. Besides, he obviously has no idea what he just witnessed. "Nope, all tiny.", you say and you continue your way upstream